Town Hall 4/27/05
Forum Link: Original Post (Part 1) Forum Link: Original Post (Part 2) Town Hall with Cory Linden 04/27/2005 Topic: Technical Advances/Features Upcoming/Possible In SL Jeska Linden: We'll be taking technical questions and Cory will be providing tons of answers for you. Cory Linden: The real question is whether I can still go as fast ;-) Jeska Linden: Questions can be sent to me (Jeska Linden) in the form of an IM. Questions will be answered, as time permits, in the order they appear on my screen. Please don't submit your technical support questions, as they will be skipped over. Cory Linden: OK, Jeska, we ready to go? If so, I'll start with questions from the forums. Jeska Linden: Go ahead :) Cory Linden: First, the info dump portion of our day . . . with Jeska's help, I've collected questions and tried to answer as many of them as possible. I've shorted the questions where possible to make all of this more readable. Cory Linden: OK, everyone recording? Here we go: Cory Linden: "Nekokami Dragonfly: Is SL more likely to get scriptable avatars for NPCs or building tools to create animals, monsters, etc?" Chad Linden: HELLO ALL! Cory Linden: There are some tradeoffs here. Historically, an avatar a human, but there have been requests to change that. The tricky part is that rendering skinned avatars with big textures is relatively expensive, so we'd have to limit NPC choices in some way. Cory Linden: The other direction would be to enable interesting jointed, animated, and/or skinned creations via the building tools. My personal desire is to head in the latter direction, but it would take more development work than just scripting avatars. Cory Linden: Neither in the current schedule for either 1.7 or 1.8. Jeska Linden: - By technical support I meant individual support issues (like "my computer is broken") - sorry for confusion Cory Linden: "Candide LeMay: Can we get more access to the client's sound library (FMOD)?" Cory Linden: This is an interesting question and broaches the much larger question of client-side scripting. Right now we haven't decided in what way we're going ot tackle client-side scripting, but we do know that we need it. Cory Linden: Once we have a system in place for that, it would be possible to expose more audio functionality. Cory Linden: "Grims Ingersoll: Are there plans for an offline sandbox?" Cory Linden: No Cory Linden: "Jillian Callahan: Is Havok 2 on the 1.7 schedule?" Cory Linden: Yes Cory Linden: "Francis Chunk: Is the LSL virtual machine moving to Mono? What does that mean?" Cory Linden: Yes. In the short term, it means that scripts will run at least 100 times faster than they do today. In the longer term, it means that we can allow scripts to be written in any language that supports the common language infrastructure, Cory Linden: such as C#, Python, Java, etc. Mono is a 2.0 feature, so Q1 of 2006. Cory Linden: "Pepplar Sklar: New renderer details?" Cory Linden: The 2.0 renderer is multithreaded, is designed to scale much better with increased CPU and GPU capabilities, while also being able to scale down more effectively for low end hardware. Cory Linden: The biggest change is a move to Open GL Vertex Buffer Objects, which largely eliminate most of the current differences between our ATI, NVIDIA, and Mac render pipelines. Cory Linden: The primary goal with the new renderer is to enable higher framerates across the board while also allowing significantly longer draw distances. The change is quite stunning. Cory Linden: "Aibu Hornpipe: Why don't you have Voice over IP? What about Skype integration?" Cory Linden: Richard Bartle wrote a pretty strong argument against voice chat in digital worlds -- http://www.gamegirladvance.com/archives/2003/07/28/not_yet_you_fools.html -- that I generally agree with. Cory Linden: However, it is clear that SL has unique requirements for creators that don't exist in other worlds. We have been exploring some novel approaches to the problem, but they are lower priority than bug fixing or scaling. Cory Linden: The Skype suggesting is quite interesting thought. I also know that plenty of folks use TeamSpeak. Cory Linden: "Dallas Williamson: Why is the group limit so low?" Cory Linden: It's an artifact of one of our internal messages. There are also scaling issues related to how we currently handle group permissions, so changing this is sadly not easy. Cory Linden: "Cristiano Midnight: When do we get an increase in prim limits?" Cory Linden: A large part of the 1.7 effort is related to scaling and reliability on the sim side and involves fixing aspects of our culling and visibility calculations. We expect the new approach to be faster which, when combined with Havok 2, Cory Linden: should allow for an increae in prim limits with 1.7. Cory Linden: "larry Clymer: Could it be possible for a user to set a waypoint for another av?" Cory Linden: Landmarks sort of have that function now, but I agree that a dyanmic (or scripted) option is a good idea. Add it the feature voting system! Cory Linden: "Olmy Seraph: Do you do usability testing?" Cory Linden: Not as much as we should. Forutnately, our new digs are much more conducive to bringing in folks for observed testing, so I fully expect us to do this more often. Cory Linden: "Tiknker LaFollette: How does development work at LL? What tools and buzwords do you use?" Cory Linden: We use the standard development tools (VC, XCode, gcc) with the usual gaggle of editors and IDEs (VC, XCode, EMACS, VI, EditPad, SubEthaEdit, others), CVS for version control, we're replacing Bugzilla with JIRA for feature/bug tracking, Cory Linden: and use IRC in the office. We do hourly builds, don't do unit testing, and use scripting languages where appropriate (mostly Perl and Python plus shell scripting). Cory Linden: We do code reviews for nearly all checkins and you could identify our process as XP, although many of us were developing that way long before it had a label. Cory Linden: Laukosargas Svarog pointed out an object limit bug that I didn't know about. It's now a bug and is in Jira. Cory Linden: "Nekokami Dragonfly: What happened to the permission overhaul and Creative Commons?" Cory Linden: Right now we are more concerned with scaling and bug issues. There are also some tricky legal issues around using CC in a digital world that unfortunately makes that harder than it should be. Cory Linden: I would estimate that by 2.0 we'll be talking about this again as it is important that we continue to strike the right balances between creator and owner rights. Cory Linden: "Cristiano Midnight: Could we allow avatars to sit on attachmnets of other avatars?" Cory Linden: The current object model special cases avatars a bit too much to make that easy. However, after Havok 2 we plan to clean up that code a lot. Cory Linden: "Huns Valen/Nekokami Dragonfly: When do we get outbound XML-RPC? When do we get larger and more flexible RPC packets?" Cory Linden: Improvements to XML-RPC need to wait until after 1.7, but the plan is to make it much more usable. We're fixing scaling issues with communication within the SL grid first. Cory Linden: "Araiya Bomazi: How are you going to prioritize ideas from the voting system?" Cory Linden: Well, the whole point of the voting system is that the residents will do a lot of prioritization. After that, it comes down to how to align tasks with resources. Developers aren't just cogs, Cory Linden: so not every task is doable by everyone, which means that there is a scheduling and resource management problem after prioritization. Cory Linden: "Unda Kinsella: Is there a plan to have private rooms without having to script doors?" Cory Linden: No, although if you look around SL there are many different ways to make private areas. Cory Linden: "Doctor DeFarge: Is there a plan to make it easier to advertise for and/or find residents with different skill sets?" Cory Linden: A major topic of internal discussion is what needs to be added to the system to better enable groups to create together. It isn't yet on the schedule, but is moving in that direction. Cory Linden: More broadly, I see search within SL as one of our next big challenges. Cory Linden: "Francis Chung: What is the proportion of development work focused on new features versus bugs/scaling?" Cory Linden: 75% on bugs/scaling. Cory Linden: "Francis Chung: Can LL offer different sims at different prices?" Cory Linden: That is a topic we are actively discussing. If there is a lot of demand that I suspect that the answer will be yes. Cory Linden: "Grims Ingersoll: What about prerendering or precaching areas of the environment to improve performance?" Cory Linden: Much of the 2.0 effort is focused on better caching to allow better performance in areas that you've been in before. Prerendering is, to a certain extent, already possible as Bedazzle showed in Chinatown. Cory Linden: "Araiya Bomazi: Will PNG (for textures) or Ogg Vorbis (for audio) be supported?" Cory Linden: If there is sufficient demand, neither would be that hard. Cory Linden: "Araiya Bomazi: Will longer audio uploads be allowed?" Cory Linden: No Cory Linden: "larry Clymer: Will lights be more controllable in the future?" Cory Linden: Yes, lights are being improved for 2.0. Cory Linden: Arito Cotton had some questions about functionality changes in 1.6. Please make functionality requests on the feature voting page. Cory Linden: "Doctor DeFarge: What about a functionality to manage resident quests?" Cory Linden: You could do some of what you wanted today with scripting. Alternately, you could do it via a website where you allowed people to determine whether or not the quest requirements were met. Cory Linden: "Francis Chung: Why is there still no unlit material?" Cory Linden: On the 1.7 list. Cory Linden: Cory Linden: OK, everyone got that? Have a nice day. Huns Valen: tyvm Cory Linden: Just kidding Nauv DeFarge: ty Nauv DeFarge: cu later Jeska Linden: I've got more for you :) Cory Linden: That concludes the prewritten answers and leaves us a bunch of time to play "stump cory" Cory Linden: OK, Jeska, let's go Jeska Linden: Keknehv Psaltery: Is there any plan to implement individaul pixel manipulation for textures in LSL? Cory Linden: As in LSL can toggle pixels? I doubt it and think that it is more likely that we'll adopt a vector standard that LSL can address. That and client side scripting could enable a lot of texture effects. Plus, Cory Linden: we're spending a lot of time rethinking textures in general so that we can eventually work on a more modern material model instead of textures, allowing more use of hardware, blending, etc. Cory Linden: Next. Jeska Linden: Nauv DeFarge: When can we expect 1.7? Cory Linden: Havok 2, lots of scaling and stability improvements. Beyond that I'm not ready to say right now. As I said in the comments, most of our effort is on scaling/bugs + hiring more developers, so less new feature work for 1.7. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Prokofy Neva: Does LL anticipate needing to slow growth and will this take the form of longer log-in lines? Plastic Duck: OMG ONLY ONE LINE Plastic Duck: I think prok is broken guys Cory Linden: The log in delays are a bug not a feature (sadly) and we are working hard to correct it. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Chandra Page: Does Linden Lab have a contingency plan in place for when the SL grid inevitably becomes self-aware? Phoenix Byrd: lol Cory Linden: Yes, the Doug Linden bot will become your insect overlord Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Sexy Partridge: When can some of the old servers be replaced. I am losing business because of lag issues, old server and too many scripts. ? impose script limits like prim limits. Cory Linden: sorry, just pointed out that 1.7 was a when not what question -- 2 -3 months Cory Linden: Sexy: we are putting new servers on as fast as we can right now (did I mention that WE ARE HIRING?) and once we have a surplus we'll revisit the problem of old sims. There Cory Linden: is a serious demand for those older machines for internal testing and build machines, so we will address it. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: StoneSelf Karuna: What's the status of unicode support? Louis Neutra: what Cory Linden: What do you mean by status? Cory Linden: If you have the correct fonts, it works for IM and chat. Beyond that we'll add it into other components as desired. Cory Linden: next (Jeska, if you get a follow on, pass it along) Jeska Linden: Aio Robertson: Are there any plans to add a field to prim/objects in the Edit window such that when they're attached to you, you'll see which body slot they're attached to? Also, any plans to be able to attach mutliple objects to one body slot? Hiro Pendragon: *cough* fingers User not online - inventory has been saved. Ontay Drago: 0 Cory Linden: The first one is a good idea, please add it into the feature voting page. The latter is less likely. Fingers . . . hmmm . . . feature voting page for that one. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Enchant Jacques: I would like to know when we can expect this sytem to be stable as so many of us invested a lot of time and money in SL and it is now un acceptable Cory Linden: As I've mentioned, we're putting the majority of our effort into stabilizing SL. Again, did I mentione that we are hiring developers? If you rock, you should email me. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Nexus Nash: Will array's ever be considered in LSL. + Will llGiveMoney() ever return a bool value on succesfull tranfer? Cory Linden: With the mono conversion, many new data types become relatively easy to add in. Cory Linden: wrt llgivemoney, we'd like to create a better sales API in LSL that would provide better data to sellers on several levels. Bugs are taking priority right now. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Hiro Pendragon: When can we expect an API for the GUI so that we can customize it? Cory Linden: Not in 1.7 but hopefully for 2.0 . . . very high on our list of new features once we are on top of bugs. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Delorus White: About lagging will it be a control on it in the futue? Cory Linden: A set lag to 0 dial? No, but the two primary sources of lag -- viewer framerate and sim framerate -- are both being improved for 1.0 and 1.7 Cory Linden: s/1.0/2.0/ Louis Neutra: dials that go to 11 Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Jarod Godel: A follow up to NPC's: wouldn't giving us access to a client-side API solve both problems? Delorus White: ty Cory Linden: Building that API is a lot of work, but I would agree that in the medium to long term it is critical that we better leverage the enormous talents of our residents. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: April Firefly: Has SL techies tested Tiger Mac OS 10.4 with SL yet? Cory Linden: Yes and last seed it worked fine (well, it worked no worse than 1.3) Cory Linden: "seed" developer release of Mac software Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Icon Serpentine: Is an expanded keyboard control interface in the development plans between now and 2.0? Cory Linden: yes, but on the 2.0 side of "between now and 2.0" Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Huns Valen: Phantom prims in link sets so that we can have (among other things) vehicles with more prims. Yes/no and when? Cory Linden: yes, after havok 2 Cory Linden: next Huns Valen: tyte tia Jeska Linden: Plastic Duck: Can more technical specs be published? I'd like to see specific info like the client/server performance hits of various things such as prim shapes, texture sizes/alpha, and LSL functions, Louis Neutra: oh what is this.. Cory Linden: To date, the scriptors have generated some of the best numbers for those types of data, but as LL grows I expect that we'll be much better with our documentation. Cory Linden: next Plastic Duck: Jeska ask the other half of the question too Jeska Linden: Travis Lambert: Q: What is the status on better land tools to prevent grief? And delegate-able ones, at that? Plastic Duck: loller Cory Linden: There is a broad class of features in being discussed about land permissions, group permissions, and group business features. As we get on top of bugs and scaling I expect to be asking you all lots of questions about what is needed. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Leran Charlton: Can we know why the degree markers were removed from the roataion wheel and could they be returned? Cory Linden: You need to have grid on now to see them. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Baron Grayson: Will there be the possibility of using prims to create holes in other prims....to help create new complex shapes? Cory Linden: Sorry, meant to answer that from the forums . . . boolean nots are a harder rendering trick. I suspect that we'll eventually add them (and it would be very cool) but it isn't on the current list. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Alexa Hope: Is there any chance of bringing back free drag, even if not default? Cory Linden: Make sure that is on the feature page . . . we've talked about it being an option. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Kali Dougall: How much time do the devs spend playing/building in SL, and experiencing it the same way residents do? In other words, are the changes they make mostly theoretical or more based on practical experience? Cory Linden: We try to use SL as much as possible, although actual usage varies per person quite a bit. Cory Linden: And we try to base changes on our in-world experiences when possible. Also, as I mentioned, with our new home we're in a better position to do user testing of new ideas. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Jarod Godel: When can we expect a white board/prim for collaborative writing? Cory Linden: hah . . . one of my most wanted features . . . not for 1.7, but we are continuing to debate the best way to implement it. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Catherine Omega: Are there plans to expand the XML control over the UI, and if so, what would it take to get a simple way to create a toolbar that would allow us to llSay text on a given channel? It'd be great for games and the like. Cory Linden: The UI overhaul (2.0 timeframe) is very much focused on these changes. We want objects and experiences to be able to customize the UI as needed. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Magnum Serpentine: Question for Cory... Why is so much attention paid to those wanting content and creativity... as opposed to those who run businesses, those who are here to explore etc Cory Linden: Well, most of our attention right now is on bugs and scaling, which impacts everyone. After that, I would say that we're trying to balance what we work on against what residents need and want. Hence ideas liek the voting page. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Verbena Pennyfeather: Will LL ever impliment simple programs, like a calculator, web brwoser, or such into the client? Cory Linden: yes Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Chavo Raven: when will we be able to write to note cards? and when will we be able to modify object permissions with LSL ? and will we ever get past the tiny memory allowed for scripts ? Cory Linden: No, maybe, yes. Cory Linden: Instead of writing to notecards, we're going to provide a different method for permanent, shared and large storage. Cory Linden: The memory limit will be much easier to get around after mono integration. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Hiro Pendragon: When will LL de-centralize the asset server? Cory Linden: In some ways, we already have, but we'll really have to do it when we have machines in multiple colocation facilities. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Renee Marshall: Will there be a way to tunnel thru the land? Cory Linden: Not on the list, but it's an idea that comes up once in a while. Good concept to add to the feature votng page. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: John Wallaby: Along with supporting Ogg Vorbis, would it be feasable to support the NSV streaming format as an alternative to Quicktime/MPEG4? Huns Valen: (or AAC) Cory Linden: Right now, we play via quicktime, so if qt plays it, we do. Until we support other players, we're limited. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: CrystalShard Foo: How are the plans for adding "proper" UI for LSL scripts going so far? Cory Linden: We've touched on this a bit . . . the plan is to create an extensible UI and also allow scripts to create UI elements. 2.0 timeframe, though. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Osgeld Barmy: native unix-linux clients anytime soon? Cory Linden: Being worked on as we speak. Not sure if it will be completed for 1.7, though. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Oboe Blanc: The "share with group" perm will change on all prims if a prim is accidentally added without proper perms, and effectively locks out all other members of a group from editing the linked object .... will this be fixed ? Cory Linden: Oh, on Linux . . .that's being done by an outside contractor who happened to be available, which is why it's being worked on now. Plus the linux port helps us catch bugs. Cory Linden: Please report the permissions bug. I hadn't heard about that one. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: KuRRuPT Ming: Are u guys going to allow us to put tattoos on more then just 3 parts of our body at one time? Cory Linden: We have a plan for more flexible texture layers on the avatar, but it is being delayed by bug fixing right now. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Lex Neva: With every new feature added, especially the changes to free dragging in 1.6, it seems like there are a few very vocal people that disagree, and say "make it an option". What is your opinion on this kind of thing? Cory Linden: I agree that there are people with a vocal opinion about every change Cory Linden: :-) Cory Linden: there are downsides to making eveyrthing an options, but the more flexible we make the UI the more likely that someone will be able to make it an option if they want to Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Musimba Yellowknife: Will it be possible to click an object to use it like a hyperlink to open a browser? When? Cory Linden: that's in already . . . llloadurl Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Hiro Pendragon: What is LL's view of the priority of cleaning up LSL's lack of standardization? Cory Linden: if you meant in world, that's a bit farther out Cory Linden: hiro: we're going to finish the mono integration first, then start cleaning up the api Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Laura Ingersoll: You guys at LL don't *really* find "try-before-buy" an important feature possibility, do you? I mean honestly. Ben Kerensky: 7-day free trial? Cory Linden: actually, that's been a major internal discussion for the last few days. Louis Neutra: only the hard hitting questions chief.. Cory Linden: If it were easy, we'd have done it already, so now we're trying to figure out how to add it without adding a bunch of bugs. Cory Linden: but the fact that it is near the top of the vote page has everyone talking about it. We didn't realize how important it was to you. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: StoneSelf Karuna: some of the problems in sl seem to structural problems in sl's architecture... are there plans to go back and changes those architectural designs/issues/decisions? e.g. do a major rewrite of the code base to optimize it. Cory Linden: lsl on mon runs at least 100 times faster, which will help a lot of these issues. As I mentioned, afte that we plan to both allow other languages and to do a cleanup pass. So, if you don't like lsl, use c# Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Jarod Godel: Is it true that Philip is really a white mouse, and the grid is secretly named Deep Thought? Ontay Drago: LMAO! Ben Kerensky: lol Huns Valen: thanks for that biting question Van Lehane: Yes. Cory Linden: Well, he uses white mousse occasionally but I'm not sure if that's the same hting Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Inferniel Solvang: is there any plan to impliment invisible mode anytime soon? and i don't understand why it wasn't part of the program since Day 1 when invisible mode would just be taping into the code that tells our friends we are offline and gives us Ontay Drago: what an interesting question Ben Kerensky: IS IT NAMED DEEP THOUGHT THOUGH Van Lehane: Probably. Nauv DeFarge: Please keep it down, let Cory speak! Ben Kerensky: Someone replace the sky texture with "42" plz Cory Linden: sorry for the delay, Daniel James, the man behind puzzle pirates just wandered in Nauv DeFarge: say Hi for me Cory Linden: no, invisible avs aren't on the plan right now Ontay Drago: waaaaaaaaaa Ontay Drago: i wanna be a secret! Louis Neutra: quiet Huns Valen: post a thread about it okay mr. spy Cory Linden: however, a big topic is how to allow game and group creators more flexibility to control avatar visibility and online-ness Cory Linden: next Ontay Drago: *sorr* Jeska Linden: John Wallaby: A lot of developers are annoyed with the email send delay timer that bottlenecks intersim and out-of-world communications. With outgoing xmlrpc disabled at the time being, would it be so much to ask to remove the delay for in-world recipien Jeska Linden: recipients? Dave Eisenberg: wha wha Cory Linden: on the 1.7 list is revamped object-object communication so that they won't have to use llemail (which is expensive) Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Nathan Stewart: Will we be getting better tools to track down laggy scripts in a sim, with names and resources used along the lines of windows task manager lists programs and resources? Cory Linden: if better tools would help there, please add them into the feature voting page Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Michi Lumin: Is there a plan to implement replaceable/reassignable default animations (fly/walk/sit etc).? Cory Linden: funny enough, was talking about that with richard yesterday . . . we need to do something to make that more flexible for game and content creators but it isn't on the list yet Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Magnum Serpentine: What will Havok 2 do to the computer requirements? Will we need a faster processor, more RAM, etc? Cory Linden: nope, havok 2 is completely server side Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Quantum Mechanique: Is it possible to get bezier curves to make revolved and path extruded prims? Cory Linden: that's a great idea but not on the list right now Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: StoneSelf Karuna: followup on client. how about allowing greater range of values? e.g. shorter legs, mabye 0 length legs Cory Linden: again, an interesting idea and one that should go onto the feature page. our system could probably handle greater ranges (at the expense of making really weird animations, of course) Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: TrinityLynn Skye: Why was the meters distance taken away from a mapped location...and can we expect that feature back? Cory Linden: we've fixed that, is in a pending release (if it didn't go out in 1.6.4) Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: CrystalShard Foo: Unicode fonts are not included with the SL install, and people need to find out what to do and where to download the fonts themselves. Any plans for opening an informative pop-up with a URL redirection on lack-of-UNICODE detection? Cory Linden: yes, finding unicode fonts is a pain . . . we're currently running through the open source unicode fonts (and generally finding them wanting) Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Icon Serpentine: With bug voting diverging from the feature voting system, what priority will community influence be given compared to internal influence? Will the voting system be integrated with the new bugtracking software being installed? Cory Linden: resident influence has tremendous effect on feature priority . . . we're working on a way to generate a similar level of feedback on bugs. Right now we have the problem of two many many different bug reporting paths which is inefficient) Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Bri Koolhaas: Any chance of object size being moved up to 16m to match the land better ? Cory Linden: No current plans to increase the object size. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Danny DeGroot: Would you consider offering in-game persistent storage, possibly as a premium feature? Cory Linden: Yes, we are currently looking at shared storage tied to land ownership. I posted an overview in a thread a while ago. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Prokofy Neva: Can LL consider charging customers per use of scripted objects on servers? Huns Valen: god I hate him so much Cory Linden: Well, residents can certainly charge per use if they want to, but that doesn't seem like a direction we'd want to go in. Huns Valen: oop sorry wrong window Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Beryl Greenacre: It was rumored a few months ago that we might be getting capes as a clothing item; any truth to that, or are there any major clothing item changes planned soon? Cory Linden: well, we now employ the guy who wrote the capes for City of Heroes, but he's really busy on the 2.0 renderer. We continue to think about ways to make clothing better, though. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: John Wallaby: Continuing the topic of email, what is the "Revamped object-object communication" that Cory spoke of? How can developers prepare for it now? Cory Linden: Once the design is completed, it will get published for comments and so that you can prepare. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Ontay Drago: is there any chance of lowering the price of rating even if not to 1L, but maybe 5, or even 10 is better than 25 Cory Linden: I think that we're going to leave the rating price where it is for now. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Catherine Omega: Have you given thought to switching from "one account, ten votes" to a more rational voting system such as approval voting? It seems to me as though the current system is fatally flawed in that there's no way to express disapproval. Ontay Drago crys Cory Linden: The voting system is going to be changed and improved as we continue to learn from it. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Icon Serpentine: When will screen capture work for capturing video directly from the SL client? Are there plans for extra camera controls (pathts?)? Louis Neutra: Why must you do that Sexy? Dave Eisenberg: uh.. purrrr Cory Linden: Part of the scaling work on the sim side is disconnecting the camera from the avatar which will let us think about the best way to do better camera controls for machinima. Our artists desperately want that feature, too :-) Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Snakekiss Noir: When will the av making process be improved with ability to exceed the current max size of body parts on the frame, increasing the slider max limits, example much larger breast sizes without block distortion or needing huge shoulders? Huns Valen: use fraps for video capture Louis Neutra: boobs Cory Linden: As I mentioned, our avatar creation approach is pretty flexibile, so I suspect that changes and improvements will largely be driven by the community. Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Johnny Night: Can you possibly implement an Extrude prim option? (This would allow for comlex 1 prim objects) Snakekiss Noir: duh was hat an answer? Cory Linden: Good idea but not in the current plan. Cory Linden: next Nauv DeFarge: Snakekiss keep you and your large breasts quiet Jeska Linden: asset server software is being run today? Jeska Linden: err Jeska Linden: Jarod Godel: with all this talk of versions, I'm curious: what version of the asset server software is being run today? Snakekiss Noir: my question was as valid as anyone else dont be insulting pease Louis Neutra: pease Cory Linden: as in what OS version is it on? what version of the SL software? Cory Linden: Okease forward Jarod's question on if you get it, Jeska Cory Linden: next Jeska Linden: Chase Rutherford: Could we have a way *within the client* to change skins? What about making sure skins only work on one of our avies? Cory Linden: Do you mean replacing the base skin without using the tattoo layer? Cory Linden: we're running out of time, one last one Jeska? Jeska Linden: Jaynius Shaftoe: Are there plans for client-side scripts and prims? Or at least visible only to owner? Cory Linden: Yes and yes, although not for 1.7. Jeska Linden: (also, that is what CHase meant about changing skins - instead of using tattoo) Cory Linden: ok, my fingers are about to fall off . . . unless you received any follow ups, Jeska? Jeska Linden: I think we've got it Cory Linden: ah, yes, we have a plan to better enable skins, but it's on hold for bug fixing Dave Eisenberg: hooray! Jeska Linden: Thanks for all the questions everyone! Cory Linden: ok, thank you, everyone, for coming out and asking such good questions Louis Neutra: wait, how I shot web You: thanks Cory, hope we can do these more often =D Sezmra Svarog: Thank you, Cory. Beryl Greenacre: thanks for an informative town hall, Cory Nauv DeFarge: ok ty Hiro Pendragon: Cory, you said HTML / vector will be done... can you answer when? Louis Neutra: cory u r hot Cory Linden: not yet, Hiro . . . order will be HTML first, vector later Hiro Pendragon: HTML gooooood Dave Eisenberg: when will the w-hat opression stop? Nauv DeFarge: Yes, when? Louis Neutra: 33rd of never Cory Linden: oh, re html, question was a "when html/vector?" Cory Linden: ok, night all Category:Town Hall Logs